This blog is authored by Wing Tat Lee, a former Member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong and the former Chairman of the Hong Kong Democratic Party.
Hong Kong people have a long history of fighting for democracy before and after 1997. In Hong Kong’s “Basic Law” there is clear stipulation that Hong Kong will have a full democratic government after the handover, but this was never realised. In 2013, Benny Tai, a law professor in Hong Kong University, with Professor Chan KM of Chinese University and Reverend Chu Yiu-ming started to advocate for the use of non-violence to pressurise the Beijing and Hong Kong governments to give a clear timetable towards full democracy.
Young leaders like Joshua Wong, Alex Chow, and Nathan Law grouped together in the university’s student unions and became a driving force in the whole campaign. In 2014, it became clear to the us that the Chinese Communist Party would not honour the promises in the Sino-British Joint Declaration. Hong Kong was ready to fight for democracy. Joshua Wong, Alex Chow and Nathan Law began gathering public support and arranged a sit-in protest outside the Hong Kong government headquarters. Professors and lecturers agreed that classes would be staged outdoors, and university students staged class strikes. The Hong Kong government was not willing to negotiate or compromise with the students. On midnight of August 27, 2014, Benny Tai announced that the Occupy Central Movement began.
I was one of the representatives of the Democratic Party within the campaign. On the morning of September 28, the entire government headquarters perimeter was encircled by thousands of police. I couldn’t enter, so I walked over to Wan Chai and found over 1000 protesters gathered there. I lead a large group slowly down the highway until we reached the government headquarters. I called on more people to join us, and our group grew to over 10,000 people.
I called Jimmy Lai and other leaders of the Occupy Movement to come out to the highway and to speak to the crowds. The police started to fire tear gas into the crowd. The whole area was thick with smoke, protesters started to cough, but the people did not disperse. Jimmy and I, along with the crowd retreated a short distance and waited for the tear gas fumes to dissipate. The scene of firing tear gas, crowd retreating, fumes dispersing, and the crowd marching forward again was repeated over the next 10 hours. Young activists used a new method to protect themselves: umbrellas.
Soon a wall of umbrellas appeared as a barrier to resist the tear gas. And so was born the “Umbrella Movement”.
Wing Tat Lee and Jimmy Lai at the 2014 protest
The police found there was no way to disperse the crowds completely despite firing over 100 tear gas cannisters. So, the police gave up. From this moment on, the Admiralty highway was fully occupied by the masses. People slept on the cold and hard concrete under the stars in the warm summer nights and sang “Do you hear the people sing” from Les Misérables.
In the following 79 days; students, artists, teachers and many others turned this highway into an “Open University of Democracy” for all. The young leaders used these methods to confront police to pressurise the government to talk to them. The police began evacuating the crowds on the highway. The protesters didn’t counteract the police with force and continued to sit peacefully. Hundreds were arrested. Benny Tai, seven others and I were all prosecuted in May 2017, two months before the former Chief-Executive CY Leung’s term ended. All nine of us were convicted.
Before 2019, the Umbrella Movement was a largest movement since the 1997 handover, and it had important political influence. It was the first movement lead by young people like Joshua Wong, Alex Chow, and Nathan Law and it cemented a widespread distrust of Beijing’s government. This led to a rapid growth of pro-democracy organisations which became the foundation for a larger movement in 2019. The international community was finally watching and it forced the world to think about Hong Kong’s journey for democracy and freedom.
Five years after the Umbrella Movement, Carrie Lam, the then-Chief Executive, wanted to enact an extradition law that would allow Hong Kong people to be prosecuted in mainland China. This sparked a much larger confrontation between the people and Beijing, and it finally unveiled to the world the extent to which the Chinese Communist Party is a totalitarian organ that will use any method to maintain its rule.
I am proud to be one of the organisers of the Umbrella Movement and I was delighted to see so many young leaders come out to continue this movement to fight for Hong Kong’s democracy and freedom. We may not have achieved democracy in the short term, but I have confidence that when the Hong Kong community fights together and with the help of the international community, I will see history be on our side once again.
Protesters gathered peacefully near the Legislative Council in Hong Kong, Wednesday, June 12, 2019.
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